Austrian Netherlands

The Austrian Netherlands, also called the Austrian Low Countries or Habsburg Netherlands (1714-1794) was an eighty-year period of control over the Low Countries by the Austrian Empire.

History
Following the War of the Spanish Succession in 1714, Spain ceded their Flanders possessions to Austria. Consisting of Belgium and Luxembourg, the region was dominated by Walloons, who were French-speaking Germans who inhabited the area. Famous generals recruited from the Austrian Netherlands included Johann Beaulieu and Eugen Mercy d'Argenteau, who fought in the French Revolutionary Wars. In the 1790s, after exactly eighty years of Austrian rule, the region was captured by the First French Republic after victories at Jemappes and Sprimont. The region later became the United States of Belgium.